


to love and be loved

by BrenH



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Found Family, comphet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 11:52:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18738469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrenH/pseuds/BrenH
Summary: Jester had always had a complicated understanding of love, but it wasn’t until she’d found her way that she realized it.





	to love and be loved

Jester thought she knew about love, thought she understood it through and through. She was familiar with the warmth of her mother, the sweet sound of her voice as she sang to the crowds until late at night, and even later at night when she would sing to Jester’s sleeping form. And if Jester stayed awake just to pretend to sleep so she could listen to her, feel the warmth of her hand smoothing down her hair, rubbing her back, the soft press of her lips to Jester’s forehead, well, that was her secret to keep. Maybe her life was a little lonely, a little lacking in excitement, and maybe there was a hole in her heart in the shape of the stories her mamma told her about her dad, but she was never lacking in love.

She discovered a new kind of love for the child her age who came and went, who she knew only as the Traveler. She was in awe of his magic, of his spirit, and he was her first friend. He showed her a new world she could experience all within the walls of the Lavish Chateau. She loved him, loved his magic and eventually her own magic. She loved to paint, to run amuck, to pull harmless pranks, she loved Blude and when he would take her on errands so she could hang off his horns. Jester was full of love. 

And when she was older, her mom told her about another kind of love, one for adults. One not to be ashamed of, but to not always be so free about. And maybe Jester sometimes spied on the people her mother took to love in that way, some new, some regulars, none ever her father. She found books on this kind of love, found herself wrapped up in those worlds, and in the tales they spun. Tales of love at first sight, of finding a strong man to love and to hold, and they were always more than a little raunchy, but the taught her about love and what it meant to love and to be loved.

And then one day she went too far, and she had to leave all the love she’d ever known behind. And it hurt, but it was freeing; she was all alone for the first time in a great big world she knew very little about, but she wasn’t entirely alone. She had the Traveler sometimes, and just because she left her mamma didn’t mean she left all the love she’d shown her behind. 

She met Fjord first, and she thought she’d ran away from her home and right into one her books. He was handsome and polite and a gentleman and everything all the women in her stories fell for, everything she thought she should be falling for. She met Beau next, and she felt a new kind of warmth from her, even through her rough and tumble attitude. Jester met them both and it was love at first sight, just a different kind of love for each of them. She loved the Traveler, and he was her friend and he was always there for her, always there with her, but Beau was her first real best friend, and she loved her for that.

Jester found herself learning about love in ways she hadn’t thought she could, hadn’t thought existed, while traveling with her merry band. Caleb taught her to love someone like the brother she never had, taught her that someone can confuse you but you can love them regardless of their flaws. Yasha taught her that unlike her books, true love can end in heartbreak, but it can still transcend death. Nott taught her that familial love can exist outside your real family, that you can make and find your own family and love them just as much. Yeza taught her that love can be softer than the books and stories she’d read, that love can be tender, that love is blind. Her father taught her that just because you love someone, doesn’t mean that they’ll stay, and Molly taught her that sometimes people leave because they love you. Caduceus taught her that love is all around, and those you love never leave you, not really. 

Her friends had saved her, they had loved her enough to follow her to rescue her, to die for her. Jester had never known a love to withstand that, and it was the first time she truly recognized the power of love. And as she wrote in her journal, as she could only shakily write, “why didn’t you come?” she also finally recognized for herself, how much love could hurt. How much it could let you down. 

Fjord taught her that love was confusing, and not at all what she thought. That sometimes love and romance are not the same, and that it’s all too easy to conflate the two. Fjord had saved her life, had kissed life back into her. Technically. She wanted to talk to Beau about it, but only found Nott. And she asked about her first kiss, wanted to know if Fjord really had been her first kiss. She listened to Nott talk about her first kiss, and she thought about how they were always described in her books, how it was supposed to be like fireworks, like two puzzle pieces finally coming together, and she found herself hoping someone would tell her it wasn’t a kiss, not really. To tell her that Fjord hadn’t stolen such an important moment from her and left her with life, but not love. Fjord taught her that you can think you love someone, but they turn out not to be who you thought they were. That you loved your projected image of them. That she shouldn’t expect for her life to play out like one of her books.

Beau taught her that her books were wrong. She knew her mother had taken women into her bed before, knew that she could love a woman in that way, but at the same time it had never occurred to her. The books she’d read had been about strong men and delicate women, about Oskar, about loving someone in a purely physical way. Beau taught her that you could be a strong woman and love another strong woman, that she could experience a tender kind of love she wished her mother had had. Beau taught her that true love means you can be weak around someone, but that doesn’t make you weak, doesn’t make you any less deserving of their love if you can’t hold your smile together for a night. Beau taught her that love was supposed to be supportive, supposed to be there to help keep you together when the world was falling to pieces around you. Beau taught her to love with her heart, body, and soul, to seek comfort in her arms, in her lips, that it was ok to admire her abs the same way she had Fjord’s. Beau helped her learn that you were supposed to love your best friend, but that sometimes they’re more to you than that. Sometimes you don’t realize how love-starved you were until you open your eyes to all the kinds out there, that love comes in so many forms and sounds and people. 

Jester had always had a complicated understanding of love, but it wasn’t until she’d found her way that she realized it. Wasn’t until she saw the smiling faces of her friends, her family, that she knew what it was like to love and be loved in so many different ways. 


End file.
